Biden finds a winning message heading for the exit
Instead of basking in his second nomination Thursday night in Chicago, Biden reaped a hero's exit the opening night of the convention
CHICAGO _ Diamond Joe was back, the bravado and sharp wit which had been glaringly missing from his re-election bid now returned, with the signature smile flashed by the departing president on the opening night of the Democratic convention.
After months of worrying, hand-wringing and existential pleas from Democrats who said that a weakened President Joe Biden seemed all but certain to hand the keys back to Donald Trump and, potentially, plunge the nation into an authoritarian state — the United Center in Chicago thrummed.
“We love you, Joe!” they yelled from the floor of the 2024 Democratic convention in Chicago, as Biden took the stage.
“I love you!” Biden yelled back from the stage. “I love, America!”
All the angst, built on months of bad polling, ennui even departures from critical voting blocs, had transformed into a Democratic euphoria.
When a small group of pro-Palestinian protesters hoisted a banner in the back of the convention as Biden spoke, they were quickly — and easily — drowned out by chants of “Thank You, Joe! Thank You, Joe!”
(The producers of the convention then shut off the lights on that section as Biden kept talking.)
Biden still hammered his central campaign message that the U.S. was still engaged in a fight for its soul, its grounding as a democratic republic.
“It’s been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president,” Biden said. “I love the job, but I love my country more.”
But the party, under its new leaders Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, had fast moved past the severity — fighting forward, and painting the other guys as “weird”.
Instead, Monday night’s opening of the convention was a love fest for the departing president.
Ashley Biden, a social worker in Philadelphia, introduced her father to the adoring crowd painted a picture of a doting father.
“He is the OG Girl Dad,” Ashley Biden said, touting all the times he told her supported her and the women in his life.
Biden’s historically halting debate performance, which set in motion the public and private lobbying to push Biden to the exit, was never mentioned.
Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who formed a focal point of attacks from Republicans — including sitting at the center of Trump’s first impeachment — for five years, who was convicted on federal gun charges earlier this year, was mentioned only briefly.
When he united the party behind him after his come-from-behind victory in the 2020 primaries, Biden presented himself as a caretaker pope for the party, and the country, in a time of crisis. Rightly or not, many voters, operatives and took that to be a promise that he would not run again.
But he did, saying that only he could save the country from Trump and the forces behind the January 6th insurrection.
This, it turned out, did not sit well with voters essential to the Democratic coalition.
The continual chaos swirling around and fostered by Trump largely shrouded Biden and his frailties. Biden’s team worked feverishly to cover his weakness from the press, and Biden’s own strong performance at the State of the Union Address, helped conceal his troubles.
Rep. Dean Phillips, the Minnesota Democrat who launched an ill-fated primary bid against Biden, called himself an early warning sign of Biden’s weaknesses — a veritable Paul Revere to Biden’s George Washington, in an interview with Wake Up To Politics author and founder Gabe Fleisher.
The rabbis of the party, who worked politics the old way, quietly, to push Biden to the exit, celebrated Biden Monday night. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who just days before Biden stepped aside, confronted the president in a private meeting, called Biden a “patriot” Monday night.
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